“Are you going out with the library staff tonight to celebrate the director’s birthday?”

“No. I’m going to book it home right after work.”

***

A chicken walks into the library. It goes up to the circulation desk and says: “book, bok, bok, boook”.

The librarian hands the chicken a book. It tucks it under his wing and runs out. A while later, the chicken runs back in, throws the first book into the return bin and goes back to the librarian saying: “book, bok, bok, bok, boook”. Again the librarian gives it a book, and the chicken runs out. The librarian shakes her head.

Within a few minutes, the chicken is back, returns the book and starts all over again: “boook, book, bok bok boook”. The librarian gives him yet a third book, but this time as the chicken is running out the door, she follows it.

The chicken runs down the street, through the park and down to the riverbank. There, sitting on a lily pad is a big, green frog. The chicken holds up the book and shows it to the frog, saying: “Book, bok, bok, boook”. The frog blinks, and croaks: “read-it, read-it, read-it”.

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Creative people need brain power. Brain power brings the good ideas out in the open so we can shape and form them into novels, paintings, or whatever medium it is we work with. Besides inspiration and the right foods, our mental faculties need regular workouts to stay sharp and focused so we can recognize a good idea when we see it. Puzzles are a quick and easy way to keep our thinking powerful.

How and why do puzzles help our brains stay alert and focused? The brain’s mini-computer runs on “software” much like our laptops and other digital thinking tools. Our brains require attention, processing, cognitive flexibility, the ability to retrieve stored information, and reasoning skills to get us through our basic day. These functions need regular challenge and are strengthened and more readily available to us if we remember to weave brain exercises into our lives.

Schedule creative play and work puzzles on a regular basis and your brain skills will remain sharp and intact for much longer. We all have so much on our plates these days that working a puzzle for brain training rarely crosses our fuzzy minds. Keep it simple and play games on your cell phone, carry around a small word puzzle book, and keep puzzles readily available in the house where it will allow you take just a few minutes on a regular basis and work it out.

Here’s an interactive word search puzzle using words from the Writer Wellness plan to get you started. It’s fun. Try it and then look for other puzzling ways to keep your brain humming. What is your favorite kind of puzzle and why?

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

~Brenda Ueland, author If You Want to Write, A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit

Creative people are dependent on their imaginations. The perpetual answer to, “What if?” fuels the work of artists, choreographers, teachers, writers, and anybody who relies on ideas for sustenance. Ideas are generally responses to sensory input from the world we experience day in and day out. If all it takes is the world to stimulate creative ideas, where did the idea of “writer’s block” come from? How is it possible NOT to have something to write about if all we need is experience? Writers become too comfortable in their surroundings and what feels like consistency becomes boredom. Boredom becomes complacency. When the brain is bored it shuts down. When we stop feeding our brains a variety of sensory impulses, we go on autopilot for a while, then the ideas dry up.

In Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, she describes a process called “filling the well” as the work creative people require on a regular, ongoing basis in order to maintain “focused attention,” or what I call awareness. Many people think they are aware, but most people are secure in their situations because they have created and repeated them over and over until the sensory organs shut down and they think they are experiencing writer’s block. While it’s popular to say you have or have had writer’s block, I think it’s a bunch of whooey. Because if we journal often enough, read plenty, exercise regularly, avoid foods that cause us problems, and engage the world in new ways then writer’s block is a myth. A writer may not have the whole story plotted out or be writing on the work-in-progress every single day, but as long as that writer keeps the keyboard tapping or the pushing the pen or the body and the mind thinking and moving, they are not blocked. Ever. How does it work?

I was in the audience at a book fair several years ago and young adult bestselling author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was answering questions. A young man asked what she did when she had writer’s block. Ms. Naylor responded, “I never have writer’s block. I have writer’s diarrhea. I don’t have time to write all the stories I can think of.” A very prolific writer, Naylor knew that the more she wrote the more she had to write, but everyone gets tired. That’s when the brain needs entertaining and the chance to feed itself with sights, sounds, motions, smells, and feelings it hasn’t experienced recently to shake up the creative juices and get them spilling onto the page again. This is what I refer to as creative play. It’s when a writer takes a leap out into the world and thoughtfully fills her mind with the ideas, arts, and images of other creative people.

It’s more than reading a good book or going to the movies. It’s going to museums, taking walks, taking pictures, doodling in a journal, taking a class in ceramics or ballroom dance, and attending concerts and lectures that open your awareness to the possibilities out there. The practice of creative play or “filling the well” is the opposite of what most writers do all day in their jobs. That’s primarily why it’s such a challenge. Our writing is about us and just us. We manipulate fictional lives and imaginary settings, but creative play demands we go out in the world and gain a new awareness by appreciating the work of other artists. It’s that simple. Appreciate someone else’s work in a deep, thoughtful manner on a regular basis and you will never run out of anything to write.

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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In the exploding world of brain research, it’s being proven that play is healthy for your brain. Most people love to play games. Growing up my house was filled with games and gamers, although we didn’t call ourselves gamers back then. We played card games, board games, music and dance games, and learning games in my house almost every day. My mother was a dance teacher and my father played alot of musical instruments so our house was pretty busy with some kind of creative endeavor all of the time.

We not only learned skills and strategy, we learned competiveness. And we learned to think like someone else. If we could figure out how someone at the game table was thinking, it was possible to win the game by thinking like them but ahead of their thoughts. That’s strategy training.

Games were really big and the holidays were really special because it meant we didn’t have to stop playing a particular game to go back to school. My favorite Christmas was at age seven when I received Monopoly as a gift and my dad, sister, and I played the game for four days without stopping until one of us won. I couldn’t wait for the weekends as a child because it meant extra time to play games.

What good is playing a game? Were you “taught” that games are a waste of time? Too bad, because playing games creates new brain cells and new brain cells mean better quality of life because new brain cells help use function and cope longer and better. Work a crossword puzzle, play a video game, or play cards with family friends. It is proven that playing games challenges your brain and increases its ability to function.

The practice of using your brain to think through a game’s strategy and then implement your plan keeps things like memory and focus in tact. Playing a variety of games such as working puzzles and playing board games encourages your brain to build new brain cells in response to the mental challenges. These cells prosper when challenged continually. Playing games helps your memory to function better just because you practice using your memory when playing games.

Don’t play games with other people’s heads. Engage in gaming to strengthen and lengthen your own brain’s capabilities. As my college teachers used to say, “Play is learning.” Cool.

There are five primary areas of practice to the the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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Hi all. These thoughts came to me a week or so ago, when hormones were making me crazy and I was seeing the world in one of those weepy-way days.

Every last thing was making me feel overwhelmed: the house; the price of gas; not utilizing my time well and thinking about all I had to do (or wanted to get done) in just a few hours.

I was in serious need of a mental shift and lucky enough to be feeling that way when I wasn’t scheduled to work the day job. I headed upstairs to face the bedroom that needed some attention and to figure out what I’d wear.

Maybe getting dressed forced me to notice my feet, which hadn’t seen an official (i.e., spa) pedicure since the summer. Since I’m lousy at scaring out the 45 minutes that would take (and often too restless to sit through it anyway), I grabbed the Ped-Egg and got to work. Within 20 minutes (possibly less) I was heading into the shower with much smoother skin at the ends of my lower extremities.

The process got my mind off my blues, and I can’t imagine scrubbing with some force didn’t help channel some negative energy out either, lol.)

IMPORTANT: If you have any problems with circulation or bleeding (i.e., are diabetic, take blood thinners, etc) DO NOT DO YOUR OWN PEDICURE. Talk to a podiatrist, who can steer you in the best direction given your condition.

For the rest of you, your own pedicure is easy. Just follow these steps!

(1) Keep feet dry and use the Ped-Egg to slough dead, roughened skin off anywhere on your feet you find it. (For those who can’t reach their feet, get hold of a foot rasp—usually available at dollar stores and pharmacies. Use Velcro to attach a longer handle—a wooden spatula is great—to the rasp’s handle. With that, you’ll get down to the heels pretty easily. Getting under the foot is a bigger challenge—one this occupational-therapist-by-trade needs to think about.)

(2) Don’t wet those feet yet! Once you’ve sloughed to smoothness, make a scrub with liquid hand soap and borax (yep, the inexpensive 20-Mule-Team box from the laundry aisle at any supermarket). Squirt a dollop of soap onto your dry palm and sprinkle enough borax on the soap to cover it. Apply directly to your skin and scrub away what’s left of those rough patches. (Borax tends to soften skin. Who knew?) Take it one step further and scrub your legs too!

(3) Rinse with warm water for a soothing effect. If you want to perk those legs and/or feet up, finish with a blast of cool—not cold—water.

(4) Apply your favorite scented lotion. (Lavender or vanillas are soothing. Peppermint is great for waking those toesies up!) If you’re doing this on a cold day, put socks or stockings on while your feet are a bit moist. If you’re bed-bound, consider putting on a heavier-duty ointment (i.e., petroleum jelly or Avon’s Moisture Therapy, which is based in petroleum jelly. Eucerin, Kerry and Curel products are great too, and my dollar store has an awesome creamy petroleum jelly that’s pretty amazing.)

(5) Pat yourself on the back for having done something nice for yourself! Take it a step further: prop those puppies up in your favorite relaxing hangout and read or just wind down for a little longer. J

Thanks, Joy, for allowing me this opportunity to share with your readers and fans one way I take care of myself.

All good thoughts to everyone,

Joanna Aislinn

I am a wife, mother, day-job holder, mega-fan of tennis (go Rafa, Djok and Roger) and recently football (Go Giants–so psyched for Super Bowl XLVI) She’s an avid reader. My writing roots stretch back to my early teenage days. At present, I’m fine-tuning the sequel to NO MATTER WHY, my debut novel. (For those who like, you can still snag an e-copy and/or print copy over at Amazon, while I transition into a new, to be determined phase of my writer’s life.) I’m also developing a third story in the series and working on some more free reads (for posting when the time is right J; there are, however, quite a few already at my blog). When I’m not writing reports for work (or cleaning) I’m learning about promo, making on-line friends while building my web presence and looking for ways to connect with the readers!

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

~Stephen King, On Writing

Waiting on inspiration? Really? That writer must not need the money or realize how important the process is. It’s just as important as the product when it comes to writing. Lots of us know we have a mysterious “writing muscle”, and true, it needs a kick in the thing we use to hold chairs down with but the process doesn’t require inspiration to be put into gear. The process requires perspiration. And since the advent of the psychological term “writer’s block”, the invention of a muse is popular when it comes to needing the proper impulse to write. What is a muse anyway? Is it the inner critic? Is it a secret font of ideas stored in our subconscious we just have to tap into for stuff to write about? Is it some guy sitting in the basement smoking cigars admiring his bowling trophies (more Stephen King) while we struggle for the stream of words that make us writers? Muse, inspiration, whatever, are all just another word for courage. Are we brave enough to be the writers we dream we are?

What the muse or the inspiration may actually be is the time it takes for our brains to sort through the muck of stimulations we absorb constantly and bring something cohesive to the surface. That’s why English professors have a far off look in their eyes all the time. It explains why novelists spill things. Brain work for writers is the equivalent of an intense cardio workout for not the recommended thirty-minute session with a cool-down afterward, but a continual mind boggling distraction until we figure it out. Then we have something to write. The muse is our minds organizing the clutter of the process until the words fall into place and we can fill the pages with them. There is no inspiration. There is only the process of thinking, connecting, writing drivel, and more thinking until it becomes the answer to the question we have asked with our stories. The muse is the imaginary delivery girl dressed or undressed in the costume of your own mental doing. She (or he or it) gives us somewhere to place the blame while we’re waiting on the brain to tidy up the mess of stuff we’ve fed it. But it’s the writing process that enables the brain to have what it needs. So keep the process going: journal, write ugly grammar, blog, and read, read, read until the muse is inspired enough to bless you with the story.

“Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:

‘Fool!’ said my Muse to me, ‘look in thy heart and write.’”

~Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet I

This inspiration-muse thing has been going on for quite a while. But notice the Muse says, “…and write.” She doesn’t say, “Take a seat, honey, and when I get this figured out for you, I’ll call.”

Will you take the process challenge this “Muse-day” and give her something, anything to work with?

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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Who doesn’t need a moment or two of mental game playing to relax the mind? When we are deeply engrossed in a project and start to feel bogged down or out of focus, taking a mental play date with some fun or nonsense notion can provide the respite we need to feel refreshed enough to finish the chores. These out-of-the-box January holidays may be just the ticket for giving you a moment of merriment and perhaps provide you with an idea or two for conversation or blogging like this first date did for me.

January 4 Trivia Day

I’m always looking for connections and synchronicity in my life. I needed something to jump start my blogging for the week and my husband has been obsessed this holiday with reading a particular book. It’s wonderful when my husband reads because usually he’s quiet, and I always know where to find him-in his comfy reading chair in the family room. But this book has been a noisy intrusion. He’s reading BRAINIAC, ADVENTURES IN THE CURIOUS, COMPETITIVE, COMPULSIVE WORLD OF TRIVIA BUFFS written by Jeopardy game show phenom Ken Jennings. Like I said, it’s fine when my husband reads, but he’s way too excited about this book. I know because instead of being quiet, he’s sharing out loud as he reads. And there are obviously many banal trivia questions in the book that he simply must ask me if I know the answer to. The holiday break has been a daily game of Jeopardy in my TV room while I’m trying to watch something serious like the New York Jets get their rears handed to them on a silver platter. But I’m patient because trivia, I’ve decided, is a form of higher intelligence. After all, as my daughter said during one of the quiz sessions, “I’m not so sure there is such a thing as useless knowledge.” Okay. I can agree with that because I’m a word person and the juxtaposition of ‘useless’ and ‘knowledge’ intrigues me. But when she immediately searched for useless knowledge dot com and started to add to the trivia swirling around the room, I went to another room to finish the cooking show I was watching. Cooking and food. That’s important.

In all fairness, Jennings’ book is well written and who would have thought to organize the world of trivia into a “Trivia Timeline: A Brief History of Time Wasting”? And I admit, I finally picked up the book and as my habit, read the last page first and was rewarded with trivia I consider valuable.

“Trivia, to borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, is large. It contains multitudes. In fact, it contains everything. That’s what we love about it.” (Brainiac, Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, Ken Jennings, The Random House Publishing Group, New York, 2006.)

January 20 Penguin Awareness Day

Again the connections and synchronicity of this observance caught my attention. I don’t typically have much use for penguins. I don’t understand how they can be so content waddling everywhere, but I guess if that’s all you know… The holiday information site Holiday Insights provided me with the loosely structured information about this day. While not a holiday or a national recognition of penguins, it provided me with a bridge to this post. I received a copy of the dvd The King’s Speech for Christmas which has an endearing scene in it where the king (played by Colin Firth) tells his daughters, (the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret) a bedtime story about a father who had been turned into a penguin by an evil witch. He is subliminally complaining about having to wear the tuxedo he is dressed in and claims that in the story, the papa is heartbroken because as a penguin he can’t hug his darling daughters because penguins have no arms. I loved the movie but I still don’t have much use for the poor penguin except to notice how the image cropped up twice in as many days on my personal radar. Well, that’s my contribution to Penguin Awareness Day January 20.

Here’s the website if you need some more random, synchronous connections to notice in your own world Holiday Insights.

Do you have any January observances you are especially looking forward to?

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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Create is a verb that requires doing. Creativity is a noun that thrives on setting aside moments to think something through. Stillness contributes to the creative process by allowing our minds and bodies to become deeply involved in the steps needed to compose the work. The idea again is to recognize the balance necessary to the creative process. A process usually involves multiple steps in order to achieve the desired outcome. A book, a cake, a painting, a ceramic vase, or a ballet all demand the ordered task of recognizing a question then answering it with creative effort.

What artist hasn’t come up with the answer in a dream at one time or another? Sleep is a good example of how moments of stillness allow creativity to noodle around and come up with an idea. Journaling is another good place to explore ideas. It’s a place to still the mind by keeping out the normal daily assaults we endure and focusing on the mundane or the particular as we write. Many creative notions are discovered in a journal. And a great many eureka moments happen when we’re wet. Almost everybody can remember a time when a brilliant idea happened in the shower.

Create is a verb. Creativity is a noun. Creative is an adjective and describes those who take the time to be still and wait for the imagination to do its job.

Can you remember a moment of stillness when a creative idea popped into your head?

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan changed the lives of a lot of writers and artists when it appeared in 1992. It delivers on its claim to be “A spiritual path to higher creativity.” The foundation of Cameron and Bryan’s twelve-step approach is the journaling practice they call morning pages. When some people read the rules of morning pages about sitting down every morning and writing three pages of whatever in long hand, they put the book in the donate box and never looked at it again. Not everybody has the time to devote to a serious journaling exercise as suggested by Cameron and Bryan, but anyone who has ever taken up the challenge to follow the morning page routine as described is changed forever and never look back on the dry, stale, uncreative days of the past. With the space and freedom created by regular journal writing, no artist has to waste time on worrying about blocked spells of unjuicy times. Following the morning pages routine even just once in a career without cheating or missing a day for whatever time period you set (a month, twelve weeks, etc.) will reboot your creative powers. Whenever you’re feeling low, return to the morning pages and watch the blocks melt away and the creative juices flow again.

“Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. Your mood doesn’t matter. The rotten thing your Censor says doesn’t matter. We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don’t.”

“Morning pages will teach you that your mood doesn’t really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you’re doing is just plain junk. The morning pages will teach you to stop judging and just let yourself write. So what if you’re tired, crabby, distracted, stressed? Your artist is a child and it needs to be fed. Morning pages feed your artist child. So write your morning pages.” (THE ARTIST’S WAY, Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan)

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.

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Continuing to support “National Positive Attitude” month, here are a few ideas for creative ways to stay upbeat in spite of the natural pitfalls of daily living.

1.Health-get a check-up. Schedule an appointment with your health care practitioner and ask for a full work up. It helps to know exactly where we stand in the areas of dental and overall health. If something pops up in the test results, address it as soon as possible. This is a great way to feel good about our health and gives us a reason to feel positive. A regular mammogram schedule saved my life by identifying a problem well before it got out of hand. Good health is everything.

2.Donate-give some time, money, or resources to a local charity. Clean out a closet and deliver unwanted items to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, or your church. Offer your volunteer services to work office hours for a non-profit or read to children. Send a financial contribution to your favorite charity or hospital research center. Don’t know who to support? Try the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, P.O. Box 6025, Albert Lea, Minnesota 56007-9832.

3.Gratitude journal –it’s an amazing process to take the time to sit down and write out everything we’re grateful for. From the smallest (our pets) to the largest (our health, our freedoms), everyone has a few things to be thankful for. Write them down and carry the list around with you for a few days. The smile on your face will catch on with others.

How do you plan to stay positive this month and always?

There are five primary areas of practice to the Writer Wellness plan. Every other week I will post an idea for relaxation (Monday Meditation,) creative play (Tuesday Tickle,) fitness and exercise (Wednesday Workout,) journaling and misc. (Thursday Thought,) and nutrition (Friday Feast.)

Meanwhile, remember to look for a digital or print copy of Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity at Who Dares Wins Publishing, http://whodareswinspublishing.com.

And check out these great blogs for ideas to keep your writing and publishing healthy and prosperous.